100 Day Creative Challenge 73: Taking Thoughts For A Walk There’s a terminology that most writers know: pantsers and plotters. Plotters outline in great detail and research as much as they can before they write. Pantsers tend to fly by the seat of their pants and just write. I tend to be a hybrid. Perhaps […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 57: The Overflow of the Wine Glass of Life The advice, write what you know, is often given, however, it could be written write out of what you live. Creativity is birthed in life. In spirit. In adventure. In learning. In experiences. In relationships. Too often in our busy lives, we […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 56: Go With The Flow A theme has emerged in my last few posts about first drafts, about not getting bogged down by perfectionism, about not being precious about our creative work and today I’m being encouraged not to over-analyse. I once studied counselling and found the approach very refreshing. The […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 55: One Bite At A Time National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is an example of ‘one bite at a time’ writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30. The goal of 1000 words a day is a manageable way […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 54: Kill Your Darlings William Faulkner once said, “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” Kill your darlings refers to parts of our manuscript (or painting or song lyric or music score) that we have fallen in love with but perhaps are not in-sync with the rest of the story, are […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 53: Process Ten years ago I decided to write a book — so I did. I believed that my years of reading voraciously, studying literature and teaching writing qualified me. I wish I’d stayed as innocent as I was then. Writing a book is actually as simple as just writing, […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 52: You Are Talented Sometimes I think we believe that to be talented means to be on TV or on stage or in print. Success is not measured purely on public profile. Neither is talent. I’ve worked with hundreds of people over the last thirty years as a teacher and […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 51: The Right to Write Quite a few years ago I taught a transition to study course for adults. Most of the students were people who left school at 15 years of age to work. They had all signed up to do a Diploma in Theology and had a few hundred […]
100 Day Creative Challenge Day 50: Just Do It! Anne Lamont famously wrote a chapter entitled *SFD’s in her book on writing, Bird by Bird. Lamont writes: The first draft is a child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see […]
